Insider Information Archives - Page 18 of 21

How OpenTable Is Bringing Mobile Payments to More Restaurants & Diners with Aloha POS Integration

We at OpenTable are excited to announce a new partnership that’s bringing mobile payments to more restaurants and diners than ever before!

We’ve integrated our OpenTable Payments feature with NCR’s Aloha point-of-sale solution, so our payments product will soon be available to all NCR Aloha customers. It’s a win-win for both sides of the dining equation, as NCR Hospitality President Paul Langenbahn explains: “Consumers can take action and pay when they want instead of waiting, while restaurants can drive loyalty and engagement.”

We’ve been working with District restaurant in San Francisco since April to pilot the integration. Says co-owner Jon D’Angelica: “We’re always looking for ways to improve communication flow between our guests and their server, and we feel enabling them to pay on their smartphones will help do this and create a better customer experience at District.”

Tomer Molovinsky, our marketing lead for OpenTable Payments, went to District last night to try out the new payments integration (and enjoy a great meal, of course). Here’s a step-by-step look at what he experienced as a guest:

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INFOGRAPHIC: 2,000 U.K. Diners Share Tipping Habits

Tipping isn’t expected in the United Kingdom the way it is in the U.S., so British diners have a reputation for being tight-fisted when it comes to gratuity. OpenTable’s U.K. team did some digging to see what tipping is really like in the country, and just how generous different regions and cities are. We polled 2,000 diners throughout the U.K. and learned that 87% of Brits always leave a tip, contributing 9% of their bill on average (£4.18/$6.56). Our study also found that men are significantly less likely to tip than women: 17% of men never leave a tip, compared with 10% of women.

Looking more closely at different regions, we found that Londoners leave the most cash — their average tip is £5.68 ($8.92). The Scots are most likely to tip (91%), and Yorkshire is the region most likely to skip it, with only 20% stating they would leave a gratuity. In addition, more than half of Yorkshire diners (51%) admitted they had asked for the service charge to be removed from a bill — more than any other region in the U.K. One in eight of the guests polled have walked out of a restaurant quickly to avoid paying a tip.

Not surprisingly, service makes a big difference, too. Over 80% of Welsh diners claim their local restaurant staff are friendly, and 73% refuse to leave a tip when service doesn’t meet expectations. Of the various reasons that guests do not leave a gratuity, rudeness was #1, with slow service and forgetting orders also among the biggest disappointments.

Webinar Alert: How to Manage Your Reputation Online

As a restaurant owner, you understand that your reputation precedes you. Whether it’s through word of mouth, online or offline, today there are more ways than ever for your customers to share an experience with their network of family and friends. So the question is: How do you present your restaurant in the best possible light?

This question opens the door to a lot of different opinions. However, with a little direction based on what’s working for other local business owners, there are some specific things you can do to improve, manage and promote your reputation online.

Next week, Main Street Hub and OpenTable are hosting a webinar to cover the best practices for reaching new customers and building a positive reputation on sites like Trip Advisor, Facebook and Twitter. Whether you’re an online marketing guru or a social media newbie, this conversation has something for you.

In addition, we’ll be covering things like how to:

Build your reputation online organically
Present your menu in a way that drives more traffic through your doors
Create content on social media to engage and retain diners

Click here to claim your spot and join the conversation. We look forward to chatting with you soon!

INFOGRAPHIC: Mother’s Day Is the Biggest Brunch Day of the Year

Mother’s Day is one of the busiest days of the year for restaurants. To help prepare for the holiday, we asked our data team to pull some of the most significant stats around the holiday. Did you know Mother’s Day is the biggest day for group dining and for brunch?

We looked at all of the behaviors that affect planning and service: when people book reservations, where they’re dying to go, and what restaurants should expect for turn times (people tend to linger longer when they’re celebrating Mom). We even looked at how Mother’s Day Sunday affects the rest of the weekend and found a spike in bookings for the Saturday before, too.

Wondering which restaurants are guests’ top picks? We looked at OpenTable search data to see which tables were in the highest demand across top U.S. cities. We also found that Mother’s Day bookings significantly outperform those on Father’s Day.

Read on for tips to optimize your reservation books for the big day, and remember, it’s not too late for OpenTable customers to sign up for our Mother’s Day promo! Click here to enroll now.

Ingredients of a New Brand: Behind the Scenes of the OpenTable Rebrand

At OpenTable, the restaurants we work with are our biggest inspirations — from their hospitality and energy to they way they delight diners, night after night. It was time for our brand to reflect our passion for what can happen around the restaurant table.

In March we revealed a new OpenTable logo, color palette, voice and type — and most importantly, a new brand story that celebrates the memorable moments and experiences that a restaurant brings to life. Our team created this video to highlight the experiences that give us purpose and bring joy to our work.

“The old OpenTable brand wasn’t ever clearly defined; there was no clear brand promise other than providing restaurant reservations, which was entirely transactional with our users,” says Kate VandenBerghe, OpenTable’s Lead Brand Experience Designer, who led us through the rebrand. “Within OpenTable, we’ve been doing some great work over the past few years to define who we are and where we want to go: We’re building new experiences to enhance the dining experience, and we’re innovating in the restaurant space. But we hadn’t taken the opportunity to signal this shift to people outside of OpenTable.”

The team started out by figuring out what makes OpenTable unique: our internal culture, our products, our audience. Then came the process of exploring, defining, and refining. We explored areas such as illustrations, ads, emails and other digital touch points and experimented with new treatments. At the same time, we started standardizing the existing brand as much as we could — people within the company began to use a single typeface for communication.

We’ve updated and refined almost every one of our core experiences, but updating the brand was different. The brand is not a single touch point, like an app. It’s an expression of the company, people and promise of what we aim to achieve. When done right, it impacts almost every aspect of the service that we offer to our customers.

As restaurant owners and operators, you understand better than anyone the power of branding and how all of these details can change the way guests perceive and interact with you. So now that you know the “why,” we want to share the “how” behind the new OpenTable: how our new visuals, design and tone reflect our love of restaurants and dining.

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Our technology,at your service.

Our technology,
at your service.